Uber Eats is bringing a Google-powered AI assistant

Uber Eats is bringing an AI chatbot later this year, helping users find offers and order across the app.
Uber’s AI assistant will be powered by Google‘s PaLM language model, the same one that powers Google’s alternative to ChatGPT, the Bard. Additionally, the assistant will scout through the information of a vast catalogue of over 900,000 merchants
The company says that the chatbot will eliminate the need for customers to endlessly scroll through stores and menus, saving time and effort.
Later this year, when the chatbot rolls out, it will help users find out the best offers and reorder their favourite meals. That’s not it, Uber says it plans to add new features to the chatbot in the future, allowing users to plan their meals, find offers on grocery items, and order ingredients for a recipe.
Using the chatbot, customers can make specific requests, and the chatbot will then offer suggestions for stores and dishes that meet the requirements. In a demo shown, the chatbot was asked to show popular picnic snacks, then it gave the options from different restaurants. Then, One could also ask follow-up questions, such as showing organic options, and the chatbot will recommend the same. From those recommendations, users can select one and order the same.
There could be other prompts as well, such as showing restaurants with both pizza and wings, recommending gluten-free breakfast recipes, or you can have dishes under price delivered in the time you want, such a prompt can read, “Find Mexican dishes less than $15 delivered in 30 minutes.” Or you can simply reorder groceries with a prompt, “Reorder my last grocery order.”
The AI chatbot will be available later this year to users in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.
Instacart, a grocery delivery and pickup service in the US, has also launched a similar AI chatbot, the “Ask Instacart” Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it provides personalised shopping recommendations and answers customers’ queries.